THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

VOLUME IV

INDICATIONS FOR
CHILD ANALYSIS
AND OTHER PAPERS
1945-1956

INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES PRESS, INC.

NEW YORK

Copyright 1968, by International Universities Press, Inc. Library of Congress

Catalogue Card Number: 67-9514
Manufactured in the United States of America
 Contents

Editor’s Note v

Acknowledgments xv

Part I

1. INDICATIONS FOR CHILD ANALYSIS (1945) 3

2. THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF INFANTILE
FEEDING DISTURBANCES (1946) 39
3. NOTES ON AGGRESSION (1949 [1948]) 60
4. CERTAIN TYPES AND STAGES OF SOCIAL
MALADJUSTMENT (1949) 75
5. ON CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES IN THE
PREADOLESCENT’S RELATION TO HIS PARENTS (1949) 95
6. THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
TO GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY (1951 (1950]) 107
7. OBSERVATIONS ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT
(1951 [1950]) 143
8. AN EXPERIMENT IN GROUP UPBRINGING
(1951) 163

9. THE MUTUAL INFLUENCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGO

AND ID: INTRODUCTION TO
THE DISCUSSION (1952 [1951]) 230

10. STUDIES IN PASSIVITY(1952 [1949-1951]) 245

11. THE ROLE OF BODILY ILLNESS IN THE
MENTAL LIFE OF CHILDREN (1952) 260

12. JAMES ROBERTSON’S A TWO-YEAR-OLD GOES

TO HOSPITAL FILM REVIEW (1953) 280

13. COMMENTS ON JOYCE ROBERTSON’S “A

MOTHER’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE TONSILLECTOMY OF
HER FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER” (1956) 293

14. ABOUT LOSING AND BEING LOST (1967

[1953]) 302

15. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND EDUCATION (1954) 317

16. PROBLEMS OF INFANTILE NEUROSIS:
CONTRIBUTION TO THE DISCUSSION (1954) 327

17. THE WIDENING SCOPE OF INDICATIONS

FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS: DISCUSSION (1954) 356

18. PROBLEMS OF TECHNIQUE IN ADULT

ANALYSIS (1954) 377

19. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING ANALYSIS

(1950 [1938]) 407
Part II
20. FREEDOM FROM WANT IN EARLY EDUCATION (1946) 425
21. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FEEDING HABITS (1947) 442
22. EMOTIONAL AND INSTINCTUAL
DEVELOPMENT (1947) 458

23. AGGRESSION IN RELATION TO EMOTIONAL

DEVELOPMENT: NORMAL AND
PATHOLOGICAL (1949 [1947]) 489

24. INSTINCTUAL DRIVES AND THEIR BEARING

ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR(1953 [1948]) 498

25. EXPERT KNOWLEDGE FOR THE AVERAGE

MOTHER (1949) 528
26. NURSERY SCHOOL EDUCATION: ITS USES
AND DANGERS (1949) 545

27. ANSWERING TEACHERS’ QUESTIONS (1952) 560

28. SOME REMARKS ON INFANT OBSERVATION

(1953 [1952]) 569
29. THE CONCEPT OF THE REJECTING MOTHER
(1955 [1954]) 586

Part III

30. THE SLEEPING DIFFICULTIES OF THE

YOUNG CHILD: AN OUTLINE (1947) 605
31. FOREWORD TO EDITH BUXBAUM’S YOUR
CHILD MAKES SENSE (1949) 610
32. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EVOLUTION OF
PSYCHOANALYTIC CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
(1950) 614
33. AUGUST AICHHORN: JULY 28, 1878-
OCTOBER 17, 1949 (1951) 625
34.VISITING CHILDREN—THE CHILD (1952) 639
35. INTRODUCTION TO ALICE BALINT’S THE
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS OF THE NURSERY (1953) 642

Bibliography 645
Index 659
 10

Studies in Passivity (1952 [1949-1951])

PART I

NOTES ON HOMOSEXUALITY
As analysts, we all know that passive patients are the most
difficult cases with which we have to deal. The cases which

This paper is based on a lecture "given before the Detroit Psychoanalytic Society.
The lecture, as presented, was based on several earlier papers.
Part I was based on “A Study of Certain Reactions in Homosexual Patients,” and
on “Some Clinical Remarks Concerning the Treatment of Cases of Male
Homosexuality,” which was presented at the 16th International Psycho-Analytical
Congress in Zurich on August 18, 1949, and abstracted in the International Journal
of Psycho-Analysis, 30:195, 1949. Other aspects of this paper were read at the New
York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in 1950, and abstracted in the Bulletin of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, Volume 7, Number 2, pages 117-118,
1951.
Part II (“Notes on a Connection between the States of Negativism and of Emotional
Surrender”) was presented at the 17th International Psycho-Analytical Congress in
Amsterdam on August 7, 1951. The author’s abstract first appeared in the
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 33:265, 1952.

245
246 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

threaten to make our efforts in analysis interminable instead of

terminable are not those whose conflicts are derived directly from
the oedipus complex of the child, or derived directly from
traumatic experiences, or even derived from guilt feelings sent out
by the superego. All such conflicts are comparatively easy to treat
in psychoanalysis.
We encounter the greatest difficulty when we deal with those
conflicts which are purely internal ones—conflicts between the
drives themselves. Among these is the conflict between passivity
and activity, masculinity and femininity, and I find it especially
fascinating to follow in many patients the eternal struggle, one
might call it, between inherent passivity and activity, or the
bisexuality of human nature. Of course, if we try to follow the fate
of these passive reactions in the male, we have to do so from the
beginning of life onward; we have to follow the passive trends in
the child’s dependence upon the mother in the oral stage, and then
the powerful reinforcement of these trends in the anal stage when
the child is passively, and almost painfully, dependent upon the
mother.
But it is of great interest to me that the main solution of the fate
of the male child’s passivity is decided in the phallic stage of the
oedipus complex. I would recall to your minds the variations of
the oedipus complex which induce the male child to retreat from
the phallic position. This may happen on the basis of castration
fears directed toward the father, or on the basis of castration fears
directed toward the mother—the castrating female. It may happen
on the basis of the boy’s love for the father, which keeps him from
entering into rivalry with the father; or it may happen on the basis
of his feminine dependence upon the father, which urges him to
offer himself to the father as a
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 247

love object instead of entering into rivalry with him. Or it may

happen without the father’s interference in the boy’s relationship
to the mother in those cases where the boy wants to offer to the
mother something he feels the father does not offer her, namely, an
asexual love without demands on her passive femininity; in such
cases the boy departs from the expression of his phallic
masculinity to please his mother. A very curious and contradictory
thing happens in him: the climax of his wishes, the possession of
the mother, the height of his masculine ideas coincides completely
with the giving up of his phallic striving as a sacrifice to the
mother. His passivity then becomes at the same time a triumph
over his masculinity.
These are very interesting subjects, and it would be well
worthwhile to go into them. But I brought them up only to lead
you to the assertion I am making here: that the return to the
earliest stages and, above all, to the passivity of the anal phase is
one of the common hazards of the oedipal conflict of the boy in
the phallic stage. It is natural, then, for this regression to go on
from the anal phase to earlier levels and to all passive strivings
which were present on earlier levels, and for such a boy to enter
latency and school life not as an active, masculine, courageous
individual, but as a passive, feminine, rather cowardly child and
retreating boy. This is a set of circumstances we see only too often
when we deal with children in the latency stage. It is commonly
thought that the increase in genital activity in adolescence changes
this picture and that even the boys who are most passive in the
latency stage will later become masculine and active. But this is
more or less a misleading picture. When the whole stormy
increase of masculinity in adolescence is past, the earlier passivity
ac-
248 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

quired in the oedipal stage and carried on to the latency stage

appears once more and determines the picture of the passive,
feminine man whom we see as our patient in psychoanalytic
treatment.
Naturally our best chances of studying feminine passivity in
men lies in those cases where this feminine passivity has led to
abnormalities. Homosexuality is one of these abnormalities, and
that is why the study of the male homosexual affords an excellent
opportunity to learn more about passive traits. As we all know,
there are two types of homosexual patients who seem to be
inaccessible to the efforts of the analyst. Either they do not come
into treatment, or they make ineffectual patients when they do
appear. They have come to terms with their passivity in the sense
that they have decided wholly for it or wholly against it, and the
result of these efforts has been welcomed by their ego and
accepted into their personality as ego syntonic.
This is true of the active, manifest homosexual who has
excluded every sign of passivity from his life, to the extent that he
cannot even tolerate a female partner. The idea of femininity and
passivity is appalling to him. He is satisfied with the exclusion of
women and would like other people in the world to share his
satisfaction with that solution.
We also meet in analytic treatment those passive homosexuals
who apparently have fully accepted their passivity and in the
manifest expression of their sexuality look for an active male
partner who will treat them as if they were passive women. They,
too, prove themselves in many cases wholly satisfied with their
solution. They very often avoid coming into treatment altogether,
or when they do come, they do not express the wish to be cured of
their homosexuality. On the contrary, they usually come because
of
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 249

other symptoms—obsessional symptoms, or some defect in their

sexual expression which makes them dissatisfied with the amount
of satisfaction they can experience. But they make it a point with
the analyst that on no account do they want to be changed into
heterosexuals. If they detect in the analyst’s attitude a criticism of
them, or a dissatisfaction with them, they threaten to leave
treatment and develop states of anxiety as if they were about to be
deprived of something very precious.
I think that in most cases we have every right to speak of this
manifest attitude toward passivity as misleading. Since 1922,
when Freud’s paper “Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy,
Paranoia, and Homosexuality” appeared, we have known what lies
behind this solution adopted by the active homosexual; in fact, he
has in no way turned away from passive leanings. On the contrary.
Though he chooses a passive partner, he identifies with that
passive male partner and enjoys in his own active sexuality the
passive sexuality of his male partner. This means that under the
cover of the same active behavior there are really several kinds of
homosexuals.
We have learned from the same paper something even more
important; namely, that clinical cases of this kind should not be
assessed on the basis of the patients’ manifest activity. Their
manifest activity gives no clue to their sexual character. Their
sexual character is expressed in the fantasies which accompany
their activity—not in the activity itself. This means that an active
homosexual can live out active fantasies, but he can just as well
live out passive fantasies, and he can change back and forth
between the two during the sexual act; sometimes experiencing
pleasure in identification with the partner, then returning to his
250 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

own role, and perhaps changing again. This is a very important

addition to our knowledge of the active homosexual.
I began to be interested in cases of this kind when chance led
several patients with manifest homosexual symptoms to me. I
naturally began to study the literature and became interested in the
various directions that have been followed. I do not want to take
you into that because the study of the literature is open to
everyone.
As regards myself, I grouped the material under the following
headings. From 1905 on, a number of authors have written about
bisexuality as the basis of homosexuality; about the part played by
mother fixation, phallic narcissism, and sibling rivalry. The
homosexual is also classified as an active or passive type, a
classification which can proceed either on the basis of manifest
behavior or on the basis of latent fantasy.
In the literature we also find discussions of the conflicts which
lead to the homosexual’s object choice, his attitudes and activities,
manifest or latent. To proceed developmentally we can enumerate
first: fear of the female partner on the basis of her alleged oral
aggression; contempt for the woman due to the projection of the
child’s own anal impulses onto her; fear of the woman as castrator,
which originates in the phallic phase and combines with the
derisive and belittling attitude to all women as penisless objects.
On the other hand, there is the male’s fear of his own aggression
toward the female, which appears in analysis as fear of killing the
woman in sexual intercourse. The man’s impotence can be seen in
this light as his consideration for the safety of his partner, a
consideration, it is true,
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 251

for which the woman fails to be grateful and which is no aid to the
normality of sexual life.
When interpretations such as those mentioned above are given to
the patients, many homosexuals lose some of their fear of women
and become able to approach them. On the other hand, such
successes are limited: many passive homosexuals remain
unmoved by them and others do not alter sufficiently to cathect
the woman as a true love object or to assign to her her proper role
in intercourse.
Some years ago, as mentioned above, I was able to study
analytically some cases of passive male homosexuality and to lead
these patients to a choice of a partner of the opposite sex. This
happened not on the basis of the interpretations enumerated above,
but via equation I made between these passive homosexuals and
their active counterparts: namely, that the active male partner,
whom these men are seeking, represents to them their lost
masculinity, which they enjoy in identification with him. This
implies that these apparently passive men are active according to
their fantasy, while they are passive only so far as their behavior is
concerned.
My four homosexual patients were very different in their mental
make-up and similar only in one point—in the formation of their
sex life. Their age ranged from twenty-six to over forty. Their
personalities ranged from the irresponsible to the highly
conscientious, from a quasi-asocial man to one with an assured
and respected position in life. One was an alcoholic addict. One
had passed through a phase of passive homosexuality only in
adolescence and had then turned to a heterosexual relationship, but
of the Don Juan type, unable to keep his female partner after he
had had intercourse with her.
252 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

I have some interesting incidents to tell about these patients

which demonstrate very well what they really looked for in their
sexual partners. In spite of the homosexual’s love life being
carried on under gloomy and very difficult circumstances, under
the constant threat of discovery and blackmail, one of the patients
never spoke of his sex life other than in terms of glamor. The
whole situation held for him a fascination which could not be
equaled by anything else in life, and it took a long time in analysis
to understand what that glamor was. It was the glamor of the
masculinity of the penis which he did not acknowledge possessing
himself but which lit up his whole life if he found it in his partner.
Watching the homosexual partner was part of that glamor, and at
the climax of this experience he really was not himself but the
other man. This realization finally led us to the conclusion that he
lost his own personality completely in that of his partner and that
he was therefore active and not passive in makeup.
The alcoholic patient in turn would roam the streets, not unlike a
normal young man looking for a female partner; only he looked
for a man in the position of exposing himself. The man’s penis
was the fetish he looked for and to which he was tied. It became
quite clear, in the course of analysis, that it was his own lost
masculinity, the masculinity which he had sacrificed to his mother
in the oedipal stage, which he found and reacquired in fantasy
when he was this other man.
While feminine in appearance himself, this patient admired, next
to the penis, the secondary sex characteristics, namely, hair,
hairiness, height, width of body, speech and manner, etc. The
surprising factor was that during analysis, when he became more
normal, he acquired some of these
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 253

secondary sex characteristics on his own body, to a certain extent

at least.
My work with these patients led me to understand the extreme
fear with which they had entered analytic treatment—the fear of
being deprived of their homosexual partners. This is very
understandable so long as the partner represents the patient’s
masculinity; the patient’s fear is equal to a castration fear. What
these patients dreaded was that the analyst would deprive them of
the masculinity represented by other men. The promise of a cure
turned to a castration threat. This is a very useful piece of
information regarding the difficulties that every analyst encounters
with patients of this type.
There are many items in this situation which could have
prepared the analyst for this particular interpretation. Above all,
this representation of the boy’s masculinity by another man is a
normal process in childhood; it is the young boy’s attitude toward
the father which is reflected here. While admiring the father’s
masculinity, the boy at the same time has a part in it, shares in it in
his fantasy, borrows it from the father occasionally, even if he
borrows it only in the form of a piece of clothing, a penknife, a
fountain pen, or a motor car. This means that at a certain age the
boy remains quite uncertain in his fantasy who really is the
possessor of all these desired things. This same attitude which is
overcome in latency recurs normally in adolescence in the form of
hero worship, when the young man once more shares in the heroic
exploits of his hero, making them his own in his fantasy. So far as
normal manifestations go, such as admiration of the father and
adolescent hero worship, these are transitional stages which
should lead, and normally do lead, to the boy’s gradually
254 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

acquiring masculinity by growing into it through imitation and

identification. Usually the father or the hero will become deflated
as the boy’s own masculinity grows.
But with our homosexual patients it does not work that way. The
admiration of the masculine partner does not lead to the
individual’s own masculinity. On the contrary, we see the
homosexual become insatiable in his wish for the partner’s
masculinity. The abnormal development of these patients
corresponds to an arrest at or a regression to this particular phase
of normal development.
I made another observation in the treatment of these patients.
When they, after initial progress in their psychoanalysis, entered
into a love life on a heterosexual basis, it was soon quite clear that
although they were able to choose women as partners and to
perform intercourse with them, they had not regained emotional
potency. Further analysis revealed that the partner was not really a
love object, but a necessary adjunct to the phallus which they had
reacquired. All that analysis had been able to restore so far was
their phallic masculinity. They were once more like boys five
years old, but boys five years old are not very good lovers, in spite
of the oedipus complex. They love the mother, but they demand
from the mother more than they give. And what they demand
above all is her admiration of their masculinity.
It was interesting to observe these men whose phallic
masculinity had been restored. They now loved, not other men in
the outside world, but narcissistically they loved their own genital,
just as in childhood they had wanted someone to admire it or to
share their own admiration of it with them. I found it extremely
fascinating to see in these men once more the phallic fantasies
belonging to
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 255

childhood, which are well known to us from our analytic

exploration of children. I shall give you a few examples.
The conscientious patient, after he had married and was potent
in intercourse and his wife was about to have a child, suddenly
woke up in the night after intercourse and felt anxiety. This
anxiety did not need much interpretation. He was a professor of
physics and the frightening presence in his bedroom was Einstein.
A few nights later he woke again in an anxiety state, but this time
there was a bull in the room—that is to say, he woke up in fear of
his phallic potency.
The alcoholic patient used to have fantasies expressing deep
dissatisfaction with normal sex activities. What he demanded of
himself was an unheard-of potency which represented a phallic
fantasy of grandeur.
Another patient was not satisfied with the idea of having only
one woman. Life made sense only if all the women in the world
belonged to him. And when he met women on the street, for
instance, something would appear on his face which he himself
described as a secret smile. It meant that none except himself
knew that every woman he saw was really his. It was the phallic
fantasy of a little boy.
The Don Juan patient actually lived out that fantasy by forming
a series of relationships as if all the women in the world belonged
to him.
I had to realize that what analysis had restored in these patients
was the fantasy of grandeur of phallic narcissism before their
regressive abandonment of the oedipal conflict. They were caught
up in a narcissistic overvaluation of the phallus, a position in
which most of their libido was not available for the formation of
true emotional relation-
256 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

ships. Women were welcome so far as they served their phallic

needs and helped to create an illusion of masculine potency. They
still represented dangers due to the demands made by them which
aroused anxious oral fantasies of being sucked dry, impoverished,
etc. It was dangers of this kind that were warded off by emotional
withdrawal and negative behavior. One patient, before actually
entering marriage, pictured his future home as being divided
between him and his wife, i.e., he would have part of the house to
which he could retreat in safety. It was only after the analysis of
the relevant anxieties that his married life became one where
everything was shared.
Naturally, we look to analogies in normal development which
might help to elucidate this transitory phase. I think we can find
such hostile withdrawal in male children whose mothers feel
inimical to their phallic development and refuse them the
admiration to which the boy feels he has a justified claim.

PART II

NOTES ON A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STATES OF

NEGATIVISM AND OF EMOTIONAL SURRENDER
(HöRIGKEIT)
The paper is a clinical contribution to the problem of the capacity
or the incapacity to form object relationship. This subject is at
present in the center of analytic interest, and was touched upon in
the majority of Congress papers. In their contributions most
authors seem to agree that the capacity for object love is
determined by the positive quality of the infant’s relationship to
his mother. The only dis-
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 257

sentient voices are those of Heinz Hartmann, who shows that not
all love ties to the mother are beneficial for the child’s later
development, and Margaret Mahler, who traces the origin of
certain psychotic disorders to the state of symbiosis with the
mother to which an infant may remain fixated.

Negativism and Its Current Explanation

Certain disturbances in the capacity for object love manifest
themselves after the infant stage:
(a) the negativistic behavior of young children who pass through
phases where simple positive responses such as greeting,
thanking, cooperating in the daily routines of being washed,
dressed, etc., become an insuperable difficulty;
(b) a similar state of negativistic reaction in adolescence when all
objects, and even the simplest demands made by them, are
met with a negative response;
(c) “negativism” to objects as a typical symptom in
schizophrenic states;
(d) states of blocking of affect in neurotic patients when
important and unimportant figures in the object world are
treated with the same apparent indifference; this includes the
well-known symptom of the inability to mourn the loss of
formerly loved persons;
(e) “emotional impotence” in male patients who have regained
their physical potency only in analysis.
After illustrating these abnormal manifestations with clinical
examples, and with examples from the transference situation, the
interpretations so far available for their explanation are
discussed. These include the experience of
258 THE WRITINGS OF ANNA FREUD

being disappointed by the love object (rejection by the mother);

being overstimulated by the love object (seduction); and, in the
phallic phase, the withdrawal of object love with consequent
cathexis of the individual’s own penis (phallic narcissism as a
reaction against castration fears).
These interpretations are, however, not satisfying. Withdrawal of
object libido and its narcissistic placement are normal occurrences
so long as the process is temporary and reversible. In the cases
enumerated above, the process is not reversed; the libido remains
fixed to the self (or the body) and no new object ties are made.
What is left unexplained is precisely this inability to change
narcissistically used libido once more into object libido. The
secondary incapacity to love created thereby awaits further
elucidation.

An Attempt at Explanation Based on Fear of Sexual

Passivity
The analyses of former homosexual and impotent persons suggest
that this inability to cathect the sexual partner with object love is
due to the fear of complete sexual passivity toward the partner.
Such persons see the relation to a love object exclusively in
passive terms. To love means: to be maltreated, kicked about,
impoverished, tormented, possessed. To love signifies therefore
not a gain, but a loss, against which the individual defends
himself. These attitudes have their climax in the fantasy of entry
into the womb (Ferenczi, 1926), in which the passive fantasy
reaches its height at the moment of actual masculine potency.
Paradoxically then, for these patients, the symptom of impotence
in intercourse serves the preservation of their masculinity.
 STUDIES IN PASSIVITY 259

A Further Attempt at Explanation Based on Fears of Regressive

Processes
Further analysis then reveals that this fear of passivity is capable
of a deeper, nonsexual explanation. The passive surrender to the
love object may signify a return from object love proper to its
forerunner in the emotional development of the infant, i.e.,
primary identification with the love object. This is a regressive
step which implies a threat to the intactness of the ego, i.e., a loss
of personal characteristics which are merged with the
characteristics of the love object. The individual fears this
regression in terms of dissolution of the personality, loss of sanity,
and defends himself against it by a complete rejection of all
objects (negativism). This assumption is confirmed by clinical
examples of patients who show an alternation between states of
negativism and states of complete emotional surrender to an object
(Hörigkeit).